Art for a Mom

I just had to post this. I took a picture of a house that my wife was born in and sent it to my daughter. She in turn did this and had it stretched over a frame, they have a name for that, and I hung it in the wife's office. Her ability to get the colors to match so closely so that you see the picture but you do see the none existant frame is surreal to me. A frame would ruin it.

I just had to share it.

Decembers Halfway Scenic Update

I realize that I didn't get the picture taken yesterday but I was laid up in the hospital for a procedure that had me there at 6 AM. I'm retired and had forgotten that there is such a thing as 6 AM. Seven in the winter is tough. That's why my pictures are taken at 8 or very close to it. I figure, no rush to get up when I'm not going out.

Big difference in the days of choice. Yesterday was sunny and today we had ourselves a small snow storm. It made the morning rush hour quite miserable for those that had to get out in it.

The whole intent of these pictures is setting the camera up on the same spot and shooting for the exact same, or as close as I can get with my knowledge of the day, picture for one year. It is to show how the scene out the east end of my house changes over time. Looking back in the archives will let the viewer see the change in color, weather and light. If I was ambitious enough I would probably get up earlier but then it would just be darker in most cases in the winter months.

Currently, if you look back at the 12/1 image you will see the sun coming up in the left hand side of the frame and as we go into the warmer months it will move to the left.

Today I took two shots. One in color but of course the color of snow is white and being such a heavy snow fall the sky is really dark. The snow turns orange with the sodium vapor street lights. The second picture is monochrome. I did this just to see if it looked any colder than the 17 degrees the weather people were reporting.

Canon EOS Rebel XTi, Tamron 18-270mm VC DiII lens.
Shutter 5 sec., Aperture 4.0, ISO 100, Exposure compensation -2, Focal length 35mm, White Balance is Daylight, Manual Focus and Picture Style is Landscape.

Same camera and lens.
Shutter speed 8 sec., Aperture 4.0, ISO 100, Focal length 35mm, shot in manual mode and Picture Style is of course Monochrome.

Poor Weatherman

I'm sure that everyone has one, if not more, weather persons that we all figure like to hear themselves talk. It is their moment of glory when some sort of weather disturbance comes into town.

It isn't like the weather is going to change in the next thirty minutes or even the next hour or so and yet, they stay on the airways. Interrupting the local and national programming to bring you the latest up to date information. Like I said, it isn't going to change very quickly.

This latest storm, and I use that loosely, pretty much came in like they said. Started with rain and turned to snow on just about the exact time frame they said it would. We even got the winds, although, I doubt we got exactly what they meant for us to get with their warnings of gusts from 30 up to 40 mph.

As usual, north of I-70, that all mighty line of concern in this area, it was a little more intense but then they usually get it north of here or anywhere else that has a north of here.

I have tried to do justice to a particular photo that I took this morning. This is after the snow (storm) started at about 6 AM Sunday morning. I have been able to make the trees in the distance look frosty. I took it in monochrome for a gloomy look and tried to highlight the sunny side of the image to show that there is light at the end of the storm.

I'm not belittling the weather people, I'm just saying do your job and report the weather. Don't give me a play by play of each and every street, road crew, snow flake or rain drop. I have windows as most people do and I can see what is going on.

Decembers Monthly Photo Posting

Same shot setup as the two in November. We have had 6" of rain since a couple of days before Thanksgiving. Three on the first occassion and three more two days ago. It dried out overnight and turned really cool to colder. Flurries were the local news headline as if it couldn't snow quite yet. Well, the white stuff here is snow and after I took this picture, around noon, it started coming down pretty good. The local weather will be a trace because the measuring point is at Dayton International Airport but here, about 12 miles south, we have in the neighborhood of 1/2 to 3/4" of the white stuff. I took some photos and I may put them up tomorrow.